The Queen Elizabeths were the first battleships to be
armed with BL 15 inch /42 Mk I guns
(381 mm), and were described in the 1919 edition of Jane's
Fighting Ships as "the finest class of Capital Ships yet
turned out." They saw much service in both world wars.

Design
history

As depicted in Brassey's Naval Annual 1923

Following the success of the 13.5-inch
(343 mm) gun, the Admiralty decided to develop a 15-inch (381 mm) gun to equip the
battleships of the 1912 construction programme. The move to the
larger gun was accelerated by one or two years by the intervention
of Winston
Churchill, now at the Admiralty. Rather than waiting for prototype
guns, the entire design was optimized on paper for the new weapon,
and construction commenced immediately. In making this decision,
the Admiralty ran a considerable risk, as a forced reversion to the
13.5-inch gun would have resulted in a much weaker ship.

The initial intention was that the new battleships would have
the same configuration as the preceding Iron Duke-class,
with five twin turrets and the then-standard speed of 21 knots
(39 km/h). However, it was realised that, by dispensing with
the so-called "Q" turret amidships, it would be possible to free up
weight and volume for a much enlarged powerplant, and still fire a
heavier broadside than the Iron Duke. The original 1912
programme envisaged three battleships and a battlecruiser, possibly
an improved version of HMS Tiger named
Leopard. However, given the speed of the new ships,
envisaged as 25 knots (46 km/h), it was decided that the
battlecruiser would not be needed and a fourth battleship would be
built instead.[1] When
the Federation
of Malay States offered to fund a further capital ship, it was
decided to add a fifth unit to the class (HMS Malaya).

The Director of Naval
Construction (DNC) advised that the concept would be feasible
only if the ships were powered solely by oil. Previous classes,
including those still in construction, used fuel oil — still
relatively scarce — as a supplement to coal, of which the UK then
commanded huge reserves. However, the then–First Lord
of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, undertook to
guarantee a supply of oil in wartime, thereby allowing the
programme to proceed. The oil eventually was guaranteed by the
negotiation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Convention.[2]

Meanwhile, an investigation led by Admiral Jackie Fisher had worked
through all the logistical problems associated with oil fuel
instead of coal, and so oil fuel was installed. Oil has a much
greater energy density, vastly simplified refuelling arrangements,
requires no stokers, and emits much less smoke to obscure gun laying, and makes the
ships less visible on the horizon.

A further ship was authorized in 1914 and would have been named
Agincourt (a name later applied to a
dreadnought expropriated from Turkey). Although most sources
and several official papers in the class's Ships Cover[3]
describe her as a further repeat of the QE design, one
historian has suggested that Agincourt would have been
built on battlecruiser lines. This design would have kept the
QE armament, but substituted thinner armour [down to
10 inches (250 mm) instead of 12 inches
(300 mm), for example] in order to gain a 28-knot
(52 km/h) top speed.[4]
Whatever the case, Agincourt was cancelled at the outbreak
of war in 1914.[5]

Evaluation
of Design

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Main
armament

The 15-inch (381 mm) gun turned out to be a complete
success in service. It was reliable and extremely accurate, being
able to drop tight groups of shells at 20,000 yards
(18,000 m). Poor shell design reduced its effectiveness at the
Battle of
Jutland, but this was addressed with the arrival of the
superior "Green Boy" shells in 1918. The gun even remained
competitive in World
War II after receiving further shell upgrades and mountings
with greater elevation, and HMS Warspite would eventually
record a hit at Cape Matapan which to this day is one of the
longest-range naval gunnery hits in history.

Armour

Armour protection was modified from the previous Iron Duke-class,
with a thicker belt and improved underwater protection. The scale
of deck armour was less generous, though typical of contemporary
practice. However, four of the ships survived a considerable
pounding at the Battle of Jutland while serving as
the 5th Battle
Squadron, so it should be judged as sufficient for its
time.

Secondary
armament

As designed, and implemented on Queen Elizabeth, the 6-inch Mk XII guns were
mounted in hull casemates,
with six guns under director control on each side in casemates on
the upper deck
between B turret and the second funnel and two more in hull
casemates on each side on the main deck aft below X and Y turrets, for a
total of sixteen guns.

The mounting of the 6-inch (152 mm) secondary armament in
hull casemates drastically reduced the reserve of buoyancy, since
the casemates could take on water if submerged. In practice, the
casemates would be flooded even in normal steaming if the sea was
heavy.[6] In
addition, the ammunition supply arrangements for the 6-inch guns
were relatively exposed; during the Battle of Jutland, this resulted in
an ammunition fire aboard Malaya that nearly resulted in
the loss of the ship.[7]

The aft four casemate guns in Queen Elizabeth were soon
found to be of little use and were removed and the casemates plated
over, and the other ships were completed without them. The aft
casemates were replaced in all ships with two guns protected by
shields mounted on the forecastle deck, one on each side. The ten
guns which were hence no longer required for the Queen
Elizabeths (two from each ship) were used in 1915 to arm the
five M29
class monitors.

The forecastle-mounted guns were removed in late 1916, leaving
the final configuration as twelve 6-inch guns in hull casemates
until the 1930s.

The secondary armament of the five ships received differing
degrees of modernisation in the 1930s and is hence discussed on the
individual ships' pages.

Conclusion

In some respects, the ships did not quite fulfil their extremely
demanding requirement. They were seriously overweight, as a result
of which the draught was excessive and they were unable to reach
the planned 25 knots (46 km/h) in service. In the event,
the combination of oil fuel and more boilers provided for a service
speed of about 24 knots (44 km/h), still a useful
improvement on the traditional battle line speed of 21 knots
(39 km/h) and just fast enough to be thought of as the first
fast battleships. However, after Jutland
Admiral John Jellicoe was
persuaded that the slowest ship of this class was good only for
about 23 knots (43 km/h), and concluded that, since this
should be considered as the speed of the squadron, it would not be
safe to risk them in operations away from the main battlefleet.
Despite these problems, most of which were mitigated in service,
the ships were well received and proved outstandingly successful in
combat. The savings in weight, cost and manpower made possible by
oil fuel only were convincingly demonstrated, as were the benefits
of concentrating a heavier armament into fewer mountings.

The class was followed by the Revenge-class, which
took the Queen Elizabeth configuration and economized it
back down to the standard 21-knot (39 km/h) battle line.

The intended successor to the Queen Elizabeths was to
be an unnamed fast battleship with high freeboard, with secondary
armament mounting clear of spray, a shallow draught and a top speed
of at least 30 knots (56 km/h), however First Sea Lord
Fisher changed it to an even faster but less armored battlecruiser. Out of the
class of four ships, only HMS Hood was completed. Though
armour was hastily added during construction that would have made
her theoretically on a par with the Queen Elizabeths, the
Royal Navy were well aware of the flawed reworking and always
considered Hood a battlecruiser and not a fast
battleship.

The First
World War

Queen Elizabeth was detached from the squadron and took
part in the Dardanelles
Campaign, but missed Jutland as she was undergoing dock
maintenance.

At the Battle of Jutland, four of the ships
formed Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas's 5th Battle
Squadron, and in the clash with the German 1st Scouting Group
under Admiral Franz von Hipper they "fired with
extraordinary rapidity and accuracy" (according to Reinhard
Scheer), damaging SMS Lützow and Seydlitz and
a number of other German warships. These battleships were able to
engage German battlecruisers at a range of 19,000 yards (17,400 m),
which was beyond the maximum range of the Germans' guns.[8] Three
of the Queen Elizabeths received hits from German warships
during the engagement, yet they all returned home.
Warspite was the most heavily damaged, with her rudder
jammed and taking fifteen hits, coming close to foundering.

Between the
Wars

Between the wars, the ships received considerable upgrade, in
some cases amounting to a new ship inside the old hull. This
included new machinery, small-tube boilers, deck armour upgrades,
torpedo belt
armour, trunked funnels, new secondary armament and anti-aircraft
armament, and many gunlaying and electronics upgrades. Queen
Elizabeth, Valiant, and Warspite were the
most modernized, receiving the new "Queen Anne's castle" block
superstructure for the bridge, and dual-purpose secondaries in
turret mountings.[9]

The Second
World War

In World War
II, the class also performed with distinction, though their
age, and the increasing obsolescence of the battleship in the face of air power, was
beginning to show.

Barham and Malaya, the least-modernized of the
class, were at a disadvantage compared to modern battleships. In
spite of this, they remained useful; Malaya prevented an
attack on a transatlantic convoy by the modern German battlecruisersScharnhorst and Gneisenau simply by being
present.[10]Queen Elizabeth, Warspite, and Valiant,
the more modernized of the class, fared better. With her modern
fire control equipment, Warspite scored a hit on an
Italian battleship during the Battle of Calabria at a range of
more than 26,000 yards, one of the longest range naval artillery
hits in history.[11]

However, modern torpedoes
outclassed their torpedo belt protection: in November 1941,
Barham, although admittedly the least modernized of the
quintet, was torpedoed by a U-Boat and sank in just five minutes,
with the loss of over 800 of her crew when her magazines detonated.
Otherwise, they proved extremely resilient: Warspite
survived a direct hit and two near-misses[12] by a
German glider bomb of a type that sank a modern Italian battleship,
while Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were repaired
and returned to service after being badly damaged by limpet
mines[13]
placed by Italian frogmen during a raid at Alexandria Harbour in
1941.

Ships of the
class

Barham received five hits at
Jutland, suffering 26 dead and 46 wounded and fired 337 shells. In
World War II, she fought at Cape Matapan. On 25 November
1941 she was struck by three torpedoes from U-331, and
sunk along with 850 of her crew. The filming of her turning over
onto to her portside and subsequent explosion, is one of the most
powerful non-nuclear explosions caught on film.

Malaya was hit eight times at
Jutland, suffering 63 dead and 68 wounded and fired 215 shells. In
World War II she escorted convoys and was damaged by a torpedo from
U-106 in 1941. Subsequently she escorted several convoys
and supported various operations following the Normandy
invasion until she was decommissioned in 1945.

Queen Elizabeth
missed Jutland, but took part in the Dardanelles Campaign in World War I. In
World War II she was mined by Italian frogmen and grounded in the
shallow water of Alexandria Harbour in 1941. She was
subsequently repaired, and served in the Far East until 1945.

Valiant astonishingly
received no hits at Jutland but suffered one wounded and fired 288
shells. In World War II, she took part in the destruction of the French Fleet at
Mers-el-Kebir, and was mined and damaged at Alexandria in 1941.
She was repaired, and served in the Far East until 1944. On 8
August 1944 whilst in the floating dock at Trincomalee, Ceylon, she was severely
damaged when the dock collapsed with the result that repairs were
stopped.

Warspite had perhaps the most
distinguished career of any Royal Navy ship of the 20th century.
She suffered severe damage at Jutland and nearly foundered (she was
hit by at least 15 heavy shells). She lost 14 dead and 32 wounded,
firing a total of 259 shells. In World War II, she took part in
many battles, including Narvik, Cape
Matapan, Crete, and Salerno, where she was hit by a glider bomb. She was never
fully repaired, and became a coastal bombardment ship, covering the
Normandy
landings, and further operations in other parts of France.

Agincourt is often grouped with the rest of the
Queen Elizabeth-class. She was authorized in 1913, and
intended for completion in late 1916, but was cancelled after the
outbreak of the First World War.[5]

The Canadian Naval Aid Bill of 1913 intended to provide the
funds for three modern battleships, which most likely would have
been three more members of the Queen Elizabeth-class, in
much the same way as Malaya had been funded. However, the
bill met with stiff opposition in Parliament, and was not
passed.[14] It is
unclear if these ships would have served in the Royal Navy (as with
outright gifts like Malaya or the battlecruiser New
Zealand), or if they would have served in the Royal
Canadian Navy (HMAS Australia, a sister
ship to New Zealand, served with the Royal
Australian Navy).

Notes

^ A
Ships Cover was an official volume prepared by the Constructor's
Department and contained machinery contracts, rough design
specifications, trials reports, and other documents relating to the
design, construction, and repair work for a specific class of
ships. Surviving Covers are held by the National Maritime Museum,
Greenwich.

^
Lambert, Nicholas A. "'Our Bloody Ships' or 'Our Bloody System':
Jutland and the Loss of the Battle Cruisers, 1916." The Journal
of Military History: 61, January 1998, pp.
29-55.